Experimenta Heilbronn – Music workshop

checkpointmedia develops and installs a new music workshop with three studios for experimenta Heilbronn.

The workshop provides children and grown-ups with the chance to form their own bands and create their own songs in five different musical styles. Visitors can arrange and compose new songs by choosing from a wide variety of preset bars (sequences of notes, sounds), which can be used in individual song sections depending on the style and instruments selected.

After the visit, the songs are available as a score and can also be downloaded as audio files via a link. All the songs are stored in a database, allowing visitors to listen to and rate any song they wish on the "jukebox".

The task facing checkpointmedia was to make work with music and the development of songs accessible to people with no musical knowledge. The experience is made complete by the creation of a studio atmosphere with soundproofed walls, high-end audio equipment and user interfaces based on professional audio software.

Visitors are greeted at the studio terminals and begin by picking up their audio equipment which consists of headphones, controller, cable and instrument connector. Songs can be composed alone, with the aid of the computer or with a band of up to four members. The music workshop’s mascot, the little rock star, accompanies visitors throughout the workshop, offering tips, explaining procedures and recommending ways of developing the song arrangement and structure.

For each musical style, four instruments are available which correspond to a complete band’s line-up. The musical styles resemble those of well-known groups and artists from the international charts.

The equipment is wired up to the studios, the software providing live feedback via every connector. Instructions are entered on a touch screen and by means of a controller specially developed by checkpointmedia. The controller is used to program and listen back to instrument tracks. Thousands of variations are available for use in any combination. As soon as they are selected on the screen, the variations are displayed as musical notation. All the variations are available as MIDI files, which allow the appropriate instrument sound to be produced in real time by means of a sample database.